CBS Broadcasting Inc.
John Reese (Jim Caviezel) was taking a trip to get away since he was still disconsolate at the death of Joss Carter (Taraji P. Henson), but apparently the Machine had other plans. First it oversold his original flight to Istanbul and then opened up a seat in first class on another flight. Reese then got bumped from his seat to another due to a honeymooning couple wanting to sit together. One with someone being monitored by two marshals, one of whom was immediately knocked out in the lavatory after going to the bathroom - a situation that Reese discovered after the machine called a cell phone that he'd taken from a jerk who was talking too loudly on it and ignoring warnings to turn it off as the plane was taking off. He called to ream out Harold Finch (Michael Emerson), who said he hadn't sent him a number.
Reese wanted no part of it and tried to warn the other marshal, who told him to vamoose. Seconds after the marshal said that, he collapsed and someone tried to stab the asset with a needle. The would-be assassin's head then met Reese's knee. It was ascertained the marshals had busted an online drug market and the person being transported, named Owen Matthews, was a witness. The person who tried to kill Matthews was a member of the drug cartel with its leader known for being absolutely ruthless.
To make matters worse, Matthews, who resembled a typical computer nerd, and looked about as threatening as a fruit fly, had a mouth on him. Reese had to resort to a bit of electroshock with Matthews' stun belt to get him to get a bit more in line.
Sensing a bad situation, Finch had to send Samantha Shaw (Sarah Shahi) to see her former employers, The Activity - the people who wanted her dead before - to see why this person was of interest.
On the plane, the situation got worse for Reese. The honeymooning couple turned out to be assassins - Mossad agents. They tried to kill Matthews, but Reese intervened again while all the while everyone on the plane was distracted by an airline disaster movie. One of them stabbed Reese in the shoulder with a fork. "I guess the honeymoon is over," Reese quipped.
After threatening to disembowel one of the members, the one who booked all the flights for the agents, Shaw found out that there was an Activity agent - the one who replaced her - on the plane. Forwarned, Reese saw him and dispatched him, but Matthews fled in the confusion. Which, considering he was on a plane and trapped inside for several more hours, NOT A GOOD IDEA.
Reese found Matthews in a lavatory, knocked him out and moved him into the cargo hold, with assistance from a pretty flight attendant he had befriended earlier. On the ground, Shaw tracked down Hersh (Boris McGiver) - who had survived that blast from Vigilance and looked worse for the wear becaise of it - at a restaurant and drugged him. He told her that I.S.A. had an interest in the situation. In a bit of a comedic situation, Hersh then passed out at the table while Shaw walked away. It turned out that Matthews was The Sphinx, a notorious underworld figure. After Reese had to dispatch of the I.S.A agent again, he discovered that there there was another cartel assassin on board, this one disguised as a flight attendant and he was going to crash the plane to kill Matthews ... and everyone else on board.
The assassin shot the pilot, disabled the co-pilot and began putting the plane into a descent, intending to crash it on the tarmac in Rome. The flight attendant was unable to override the door's locks, but Reese, taking a page from United 93, grabbed a food cart and rammed it into the door, smashing it open. Inside, he began fighting the assassin, while no one was controlling the plane. Everyone was doomed.
Ah, but on the ground, Finch was able to hack into the airline's controls and by using the controls from a flight simulator joystick, was able to safely land the plane. Of course, all the passengers were blissfully unaware that they had come thisclose to dying. After all the passengers exited, Reese went to the baggage area and grabbed a large travel crate. Matthews was inside and Reese sent him off to a safe house where Finch would contact him to set him up with a new identity and place to live.
Later, Reese met the flight attendant for a drink in Rome. She gave him her card and told him to call her when he got back in the United States. After she left, he met Finch, who was sitting at a cafe table nearby. Finch had come personally to set up Matthews' new life. There was a bit of awkward conversation, but Finch admitted that he missed Carter terribly too. He also said that he had purposely set up the Machine to always have a human element decide the fate of someone. He offered to have Reese join him at a museum. Reese declined, which made Finch's look crestfallen, but he said that he had wanted to go to a tailor ... so he could be fitted for a new suit. That made Finch's day, since he knew that mean Reese was coming back to work.
Best Lines
Matthews: "Who are you?"Reese: "A concerned frequent flyer."
"You seem like an angry guy. Do you want to talk about that?" -- Matthews to Reese
"I didn't like my boss's boss." - Reese
"What do you need hairspray for? That salt-and-pepper hair is catnip for soccer moms. Go au naturale." -- Matthews*death glare from Reese, who had been looking for a possible weapon*
"I thought you got rid of that walking steroid?" -- Matthews to Reese as the I.S.A. agent bore down on them for the second time.
Follow @Hollywood_com
//
Follow @literateartist
//

USA Network
Apparently Jeff Eastin, the show's creator, decided his New Year's Resolution was to really toss things into high gear with this episode. He succeeded.
The episode aired with Peter Burke (Tim DeKay) running in the park (all that was missing was the title music for Chariots of Fire in the background), ruminating on what had gone on with Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer) and his recent actions that, while keeping him out of jail, seriously crossed lines in terms of lawfulness in Burke's eyes. He then got a call from the FBI Section Chief Bruce (Boris McGiver in a decidedly different role than the assassin Hersh on Person of Interest) who said that Washington was ready to hire Burke. It was a huge opportunity for the longtime FBI agent, but as Agent Clinton Jones (Sharif Atkins) told him in the next scene, Caffrey was holding him back and Jones suggested that Caffrey should learn to take responsibility for his own actions. Of course, neither agent had a clue what was REALLY going on.
Caffrey and Mozzie (Willie Garson) went to meet Curtis Hagen (Mark Sheppard) at a public water fountain. Caffrey wanted to renegotiate, but Hagen had his own tactic - kidnapping Rebecca Lowe (Bridget Regan), Caffrey's love interest. He proved it by showing a cell phone with a live stream of her sitting in a corner of a room, gagged. Caffrey was ready to drown the scuzzy forgerer, but held back after being warned that the lovely hostage would die. Caffrey had half an hour to meet at an address with the window.
In the past few episodes, Caffrey and Mozzie had been finding their friendship really strained, since Mozzie had kept warning his friend not to get emotionally entangled with Lowe. Yeah. Like Caffrey really listened to that. He proved that there was still solidarity when Caffrey said, "I'm on my own." after Mozzie tried to get him to loop Burke in, Mozzie said softly, "No ... we're on our own." which earned a grateful beam from Caffrey. They hatched a plan to try to plant a tracking device/bug on Hagen that would allow them to both listen and follow him wherever he went.
Burke met his wife Elizabeth (Tiffani Thiessen) at the park and told her that he was taking the Washington job in two weeks. Burke still felt tortured at having to accept what Caffrey had done. He also showed her the card that the late Agent David Siegel (Warren Kole) had been carrying. He was meeting an art dealer about a possible forgery. He said he was not bringing Caffrey in on it.
Caffrey and Mozzie met Hage. Caffrey showed the window pane - that should have been it, but Hagen made them stay to solve the rest of the puzzle of the Mosconi code. He said that Mosconi was covering a big secret and showed them a mural he had restored. Caffrey took this as a cue to try to sidle up to Hagen and slip the bug in Hagen's pocket. The Gods Of TV Writing had Burke call him right there, killing that chance. Caffrey said that he had to see the FBI agent so as not to arouse suspcicion. Before he left, he made Hagen call Lowe and he talked to her. Well, he talked at her, since she was gagged and couldn't say anything more than "MMPH! MMMPH! MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMPH!"
While Caffrey was with Burke trying to suss out wheter a painting was a forgery, Mozzie and Hagen were having a snark-off, with both actors leveraging their smarminess to the hilt. Hagen showed that he had the upper hand by revealing that he knew Mozzie's real name of Teddy Winters. At the art dealer, Caffrey found that the painting was indeed a fake and that it had Hagen's initials hidden on it. This set Burke on Hagen's trail, which couldn't happen. Caffrey decided to put the tracking device on Burke instead so that he could track him and know if and when he might be going after Hagen.
After hearing that Burke had pinpointed Hagen's location to where they were currently (and also some damning things about his moral character), Caffrey turned the tables on his nemesis. After having Mozzie "Rain Man" the Mosconi Codex pages, he dumped them on the ground, poured gasoline on them and then after Hagen freed Lowe, set them on fire. While Hagen spluttered, the two men dashed away, with Caffrey splintering off to meet Lowe in a harrowing scene that had me expecting her to be shot in front of him. That didn't happen as they had a long embrace. A few minutes later, Burke and Jones came in and found Hagen, smoking a cigar and seeming quite full of himself. Another problem - Jones decided to check Caffrey's anklet ... which would place him in Hagen's hideout for most of the day.
Caffrey and Lowe were sharing what they knew while hunkering at his place - and Lowe insisted on not telling the police the true story, since that would land Caffrey in jail. They decided to keep working on it together and they figured out that Mosconi may have been hiding a diamond that was the equivalent of the Hope Diamond.
In the interrogation room, Hagen, after telling Burke that Caffrey had probably framed him for that painting, took both of them to a park. A whole phlanx of police accompanied them. He began brazenly telling Caffrey and Burke to 'beg for his freedom.' Then everything turned sideways. A sniper's bullet hit Hagen, killing him instantly. As Keanu Reeves is fond of saying in his movies: Whoa...
Burke and Caffrey found the apartment that Hagen had been staking out, The address and apartment number matched the one on Siegel's card. They found that it was a home office that had impeccable records not only on the two men, but everyone in Burke's division ... and the late Agent Siegel. On top of that, Caffrey found an area where paintings had been created, and Hagen's initials practiced over and over. In another room, there was a dressing room area, with pictures of Rebecca in various stages of costumes, and the area where Rebecca had allegedly been held hostage by Hagen earlier. The two men stood there gobsmacked as the episode ended.
Immediate thoughts:
Bomer got a chance to flex some acting muscle: his near-frenzied run when Caffrey was trying to meet up with Lowe was a perfect showing of how the usually ultra-cool man was this-close to losing it.
Well, now Sheppard can go back to just playing the dastardly Crowley on Supernatural.
Was Hagen collaborating with Rebecca and got betrayed by her? This is the first time in a while that the show has made my head spin.
Caffrey: It looks like the con man got conned.
It looked like there was a bit of thawing between Burke and Caffrey at the end when they realized that Hagen may have been a pawn too. Hopefully the show can get back to the friendship of sorts they had in the early seasons.
Follow @Hollywood_com
//

CBS
The episode opened with things looking bleak. Control (Camryn Manheim) and Hersh (Boris McGiver) had the upper hand, with Harold Finch (Michael Emerson), Arthur Claypool (Saul Rubinek) and Samantha Shaw (Sarah Shahi) all under the barrels of guns in a supposed safe room. Shaw was just about to be taken out with two shots when Root (Amy Acker) burst in, wielding dual pistols. After a frantic shoot-out, Hersh wound up shooting Root from behind while Shaw, Finch and Arthur got away. So did Control and Hersh, with Root in their custody.
Finch and Claypool, who was dying from a brain tumor, found a bank deposit box that was supposed to hold the code for Samaritan, Claypool's creation that was similar to the Machine that Finch had created. Problem was, the privacy zealots Vigilance also joined the party and took over the bank while Finch and Claypool were in the vaults below with the bank manager. Finch locked the vault door to keep Vigilance out, but not before the manager got wounded in the leg in a shootout. To make matters worse, Hersh was one of the people leading the SWAT team outside the bank. (I would not have taken the odds on Vigilance were I were a betting man.) Shaw was still hiding in the bank lobby, communicating with Finch.
On the other side of the country, John Reese (Jim Caviezel) and Lionel Fusco (Kevin Chapman) were in a holding cell, hashing out the meaning of what they were doing. Fusco said he wanted to keep fighting the good fight while Reese saw it as pointless. Fusco gave up in disgust and signaled that he was ready to leave. He did mention that he hadn't heard from Finch and suggested that he might need their help.
After some time, Vigilance ran out of patience and decided to blow the vault, but Shaw rigged another bomb nearby so that an escape route through the sewers would be available. Claypool smashed the code for Samaritan under his foot. They were nearly ready to leave when Vigilance caught up, only to have Fusco and Reese appear to save them. Hersh had some Vigilance pinned down as well, but one of them was holding a grenade and detonated it. Chances are very high that Hersh survived, though, since he could probably live through a nuclear bomb.
Root's situation played out thusly: She was held in a cage by Control and was alternately being given barbituates and uppers to get her to talk. Root kept begging the Machine to help, which caused Control to smirk and keep asking her to tell her where the Machine was. Root scoffed and said that the Machine was too complicated for the likes of her Finally, Control cut an important bone out of Root's head - one that controlled sound from the ear to the brain. But it turned out the Machine had been talking... at a level of sound that Control. who was in her 50s, could not hear but that the younger Root could. It gave her important information, like where Control kept an extra scalpel on her body, an area that Root could reach when Control was performing her 'surgery.' Root freed herself and took control (snort) of Control. She talked to the Machine and it told her to tell Control to leave it alone, telling Control that it was watching her at all times.
Finch sat with Claypool, who was back in a hospital bed, waiting to die. He told Finch that he was losing memories. Finch said that they weren't destroyed and then Root called and told Finch that finding the Samaritan code was her problem. She then had the machine play back memories, happy ones, for Claypool to watch before he passed on.
Reese, who had just rescued Finch, said that he couldn't stay. He felt the Machine had let him down when Joss Carter died and that it didn't really care who lived and died. He left while a bereft Finch could only watch.
Apparently the bank manager had actually been a plant - the real manager was killed just before the three had entered. Unfortunately, that loose end was tied up by the mysterious man who has Finch in his sights. He shot the woman and he now had the Samaritan Code.
The episode also showed flashbacks to Finch's life, including his talking to his increasingly dementia-addled father about machines and his hacking the government. It also showed the genesis of the Harold Finch name: He pressed a bird-watching book into his father's hand as he was fleeing being questioned about the hacking. Hopefully this will end up in something really good.
Follow @Hollywood_com
//

Getty/USA
White Collar returned with Neal Caffrey (Matthew Bomer) straddling the line between legitimacy and crime while his FBI handler, Peter Burke (Tim DeKay), wavered between trust and cynicism of his charge.
The episode opened with Burke in prison after being framed at the end of the summer season. His wife (Tiffani Thiessen) was having a conversation with Caffrey and told him to do what he had to do to free him. Before he could, he was contacted by a mysterious person who turned out to be Curtis Hagen, whom Caffrey had put away in the first episode. After a bit of a chat, Hagen said that he could make the incarcerated FBI agent a free man. He acknowledged that he was the reason that the federal prosecutor was leaning so heavily on Burke, and then indicated that he could get him to let him go. In return, he asked Caffrey to do a quick 'smash and grab.' He added one more catch - get his father's confession on tape as the one who actually committed the shooting...even forge it if necessary.
Mozzie immediately jumped into the fray (well, as much as a geek who abhors physical activity can). He had also managed to crack Neil's tracking anklet. He got Caffrey to record a confession, using technology to make it sound like his fathers' voice. The plan worked and Burke was sprung. Burke believed that it was really Caffrey's father who called and he thanked him. Yet another layer of deceit between Caffrey and Burke, since Caffrey did nothing to dissuade the FBI agent. Hagen then called in his favor.
More intrigue: Burke got an offer from Boris McGiver (playing an unnamed higher-up) to become the head of White Collar. Always good to see McGiver when his character, Hersh, isn't getting his ass kicked on Person of Interest.
Hagen wanted Caffrey to get Welsh gold coins from a heavily guarded vault. What happened next involved some comedy with Mozzie wearing an awful wig and goatee, pretending to be a jumper. Caffrey played a fireman who was supposed to be rescuing him and got the building next to the vault evacuated. There were two sequences going on - Caffrey getting the coins and Mozzie finding out out that the suicide negotiator that was supposed to talk him down had even more insane conspiracy theories than he did.
Of course the plan went awry when an overzealous fireman probie made Caffrey hand over the oxygen tanks before he could steal away. It was White Collar 101: Thy most thought-through plan shall falleth through due to the most silly things ever. To make matters worse, the missing coins case was assigned to who? Three guesses.. OK. No. One guess. BURKE, of course. He asked Caffrey to consult, as well. Then of course, he tumbled on to the air tanks that Caffrey used to store the coins ('Why are there air tanks if there isn't a fire?"). Caffrey and Mozzie had to figure out how to save themselves and thwart Burke at the same time. They went to the firehouse and Caffrey got the coins out, but managed to stir Burke's suspicions.
The episode ended with Burke stepping down as Caffrey's handler, realizing that while he thought of Caffrey as a friend, he was still a criminal. He then gave him a new ankle braclet, much to Caffrey's chagrin. Oh, and Hagen revealed that he was really targeting Caffrey and had blackmail material on him from the job. His intention... get him paroled. Ah, White Collar, you and your twists. The plot is afoot and it's interesting that they would bring Hagen back after all this time and to expect many to remember what part he played in the pilot episode. Not all of us have been with the show from the start. But then again, Mark Sheppard is riding a much larger wave of recognition after all those seasons of playing Crowley on Supernatural. He's playing another demon in this show, one who is always making deals. It's going to be an interesting ride.
Follow @Hollywood_com
//

If Steven Spielberg called you up and asked you to take a role in his new film, what would you do? I'll tell you what you'd do: sign on the dotted line so fast your nagging wife would think the contract was for a divorce. Wow, that was a bit harsh, but you get the idea. Spielberg's one of those guys that actors pray to get the chance to work with their entire lives so when the opportunity arises, there's no screwing around. You've got to bring your A-game to the set because there are no second chances. It's all or nothing.
I'd bet, then, that right about now a dozen or so of Hollywood's finest are a bit jittery over being asking to join the Oscar-winning auteur's highly-anticipated new period drama Lincoln, which has been in the works for more years than I can remember. DreamWorks has stated that Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Bruce McGill, James Spader, David Costabile, Joseph Cross, John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson, Hal Holbrook, Byron Jennings, Dakin Matthews, Boris McGiver, Gloria Reuben, Jeremy Strong and David Warshofsky have joined the production. That is an impressive pool of talent, adding to the award winning duo of Daniel Day-Lewis and Sally Field playing Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln.
Most of the actors' roles are unspecified at this time, but a few have been revealed. Jones will play Thaddeus Stevens, while Gordon-Levitt will portray Robert Todd Lincoln, meaning that he's going to get to share many frames with multiple Oscar winner Day-Lewis and will hopefully learn lots from the chameleon-like thespian. A report filed yesterday stated that production on the epic biopic would begin in the fall in Virginia for a possible late 2012 release.
I don't really know what else to say other than "Oscar bait." This film has all the makings of an Academy Award sweep, with a screenplay from the great Tony Kushner (Munich) and Doris Kearns Goodwin (who also wrote the novel from which the film is based) and Spielberg's regular acclaimed production crew on board to bring 19th Century America to vividly breathtaking life. We'll return with more information on further casting and role identification as it becomes available.
Source: DreamWorks Pictures